Blainor McGough of Gorham has been named the new executive director for The Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity in Bridgton.

Blainor is a longtime contributor to the Maine arts scene as a musician, DJ, performing artist, curator, and founding Executive Director of Mayo Street Arts in Portland from 2009-2021.

At Mayo Street Arts, McGough curated the Center’s music, theater, and visual arts exhibits, while implementing arts and community initiatives drawing together artists, youth, and diverse cultural communities of East Bayside.

Founded in 2005, the Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity features the life and times of a 19th century New Englander; artist and inventor, Rufus Porter (1792-1884). Porter is known in the folk art community for his miniature portraits and landscape murals found in early homes throughout New England.

While at Mayo Street Arts, McGough commissioned a mural for the theater’s proscenium, Moons of Pluto, 2013, by Patrick Corrigan, and an exterior building mural, Welcome Mural, 2020, by Alexis Iammarino.

The Rufus Porter Museum is in the midst of a capital campaign to build a new barn on its Main Street campus in downtown Bridgton that will display landscape murals of the Rufus Porter School along with inventions and curiosities of Porter’s era. The organization has raised 1.3 million of its 1.6 million goal to date, and the post and beam construction phase of the project is slated to begin Aug. 14.

“The Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity is at a turning point in our history,” said Therese Johnson, president of the RPM Board of Trustees. “We are thrilled to welcome Blainor as our new director as we launch the next phase of art and community right in the heart of downtown Bridgton.”

A native of Maine, Blainor lives in Gorham with her husband Brian Arlet and their two boys, ages 10 and 14.

Blainor received her BA in Communications/Media Studies in 2002 from the University of Southern Maine, is an avid gardener, and races vintage motorcycles with the United States Classic Racing Association.

During her tenure at Mayo Street Arts, Blainor established RAD, an award-winning arts literacy program for immigrant youth; TAN, a traditional artist network for New Mainer artists awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts; and was instrumental in forming The Ideals (formerly known as The Ideal Maine Social Aid and Sanctuary Band), Portland’s premier activist marching band; and SLAP, a women’s philanthropic arm-wrestling league.

Under Blainor’s leadership, MSA received the 2019 Stand for the Arts Award, for level of community outreach and engagement, ability to create inclusive access to artistic programming, and innovative approach to arts education and skills development, and the 2018 Metamorphosis Award, honoring visionary arts leaders of Maine making change for youth, who have a proven track record of sustained, philanthropic success.

In 2021 during the C-19 Pandemic, Blainor and gallerist June Fitzpatrick launched the MSA Pop-up Gallery, featuring artists Richard Wilson, Michel Droge, William Manning, Christopher Patch, Patrick Corrigan, Noriko Sakanishi, Justin Richel, Shannon Rankin, and Patt Franklin.

Blainor worked most recently at Maine Historical Society in Portland as Grants Specialist and is a big fan of MHS and Maine History.